Attention, Citizens

Your intrepid reporter went to the grocery store this morning. The intrepid part was because I’m driving again after 10 years hiatus and a couple of abortive attempts. (Mostly my eyes. My eyes were really bad. Turns out hypothyroidism makes your eyes dry out. Who knew? Well, all your tissues, but it was really bad on the eyes.)

Shelves are about normal, only they only let you get two “packages” of eggs. Which is silly, but this close to Easter I kind of get it.

Fewer people out than I expect this close to Easter, but then it’s morning, and just our little grocery store. About half the employees wearing masks. Only one shopper, looking terrified and wearing masks.

If I hear over the store loudspeaker ONCE MORE “We’re all in this together” though, I swear to Heinlein’s memory I’m going to snap.

Okay, maybe I already snapped, since I yelled up at the loudspeakers “Attention, citizens!” in my most peeved voice. Weirdly the two people within sight first looked shocked, then grinned. Perhaps the faux Russian accent helps.

Now, can we talk? WHAT IN THE NAME OF UNHOLY FANDANGO IS GOING ON WITH THIS NATION? DOESN’T ANYONE PAY ANY ATTENTION TO ANYTHING, EVER?

Look, I know we’re all about convenience. I like convenience. In fact, for my European readers: YOU HAVE NO IDEA. Americans’ demands for comfort and convenience are part of what makes us so productive and — ignore the stupid polls that say nations dopped to the gills are happier. they use other parameters — generally happy and vital as a nation. I know, there is a stoicism in Europe, a feeling that “we can endure anything” and “those soft Americans.” But it’s not like that. All our convenience stuff, like being able to jot down to the stores in our own car, just make our life more productive by freeing up our time and mind-space. Not being hot or cold. Not enduring being treated as is our time and convenience doesn’t matter. All of this are good things.

But born-and-raised Americans are also among the most naive people in the universe when it comes to cheating. When I first started saying that the Democrats were cheating on an epic scale, you thought I was crazy. When I said early voting and mail in voting were just vehicles for fraud, you whined that voting in person on the day was inconvenient.

It sure is. Freedom often is.

At some point I stopped getting so much push back on those items. I think the naked fraud in eighteen got people’s attention.

But you know, all you have to do is scare people with a fake pandemic, and they lose their minds again, and are now saying that they would be okay with mail in only ballots if “the pandemic is bad in November.”

Have you lost your tiny little minds? Are you out of will to live? How much do you love Venezuela? North Korea?

Look, no state that goes all-vote-by-mail ever elects anything but democrats again. If you think that’s a coincidence, I have some swamp land in Florida.

As for “if the pandemic is bad” IT WILL BE. Because anyone who dies of anything including being beaten to death will be labeled a Wu-flu victim. They’re already doing that in NYC, why do you think they’d stop?

Do you enjoy house arrest? Do you have any idea how bad food shortages will get in the winter? (No, I’m not alone in seeing this. Apparently people are buying baby chicks wholesale.) Is this how you want to live forever?

Make your voices known. The democrats have been stealing elections a LONG time. But this would hand them the whole lock stock and barrel forever. And let me tell you, as a citizen of Colorado, once they know they can’t lose elections, they don’t give a shit what you think. And you know our fellow citizens assume the elections are fair and legal, no matter how STUPID the results.

I do like ballot drop-boxes at public locations such as libraries, though.

Personally, I’d like to have a universal voter roll purge. 100%. Six months of “everybody’s off the rolls, you WILL have to re-register.” Do that on a regular basis, because nobody can fix the rolls. Just wipe them clean and start over, and have that be the usual thing.

I’ve said the same thing for years. Never happen of course–the bleaters will snivel and whine about “disenfranchisement” so loud it’ll be like a power drill to the ears. And you’re not allowed to slap them silly. Not yet…

There’s no evidence because there are no safeguards, nothing in place to catch fraudulent ballots.

The FIRST thing any cashier learns is to ALWAYS count your drawer upon receipt to ensure you start the shift with a valid balance. It is the most basic of audit techniques! But our balloting lacks even so trivial a safeguard as that — it is virtually designed to facilitate fraud.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence., and anybody arguing otherwise is either dishonest himself or too stupid to cut a deck of cards before the deal.
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Physical ballots have to pass through a chain of custody, in Arizona at least.

I worked several elections in Pima County. A member of Team Red and Team Blue have to accompany the ballot box from the polling station to the County Recorder’s office. Where it’s verified to have been sealed by a receiving team which also includes a member of each party. The seals have serial numbers and that number’s checked to see that it’s the one issued to the voting location. Some outlying precincts may get brought in by a lone Sheriff’s Deputy, but the seals on the boxes are still checked. The poll workers, or Deputy, have to sign the box in, and the receiving team has to sign they received it. The only place to “adjust” the count are at the polling place, where you’re under the observation of the other poll workers; or after the ballot boxes are opened in the Recorder’s Office, also presumable under observation.

VBM bypasses all of that.

Also it’s been several years since I worked an election, and they may have changed procedures for the physical ballots, to “improve efficiency…” Though every election we had to take the oath of office, including those silly defend the Constitution of the United States… against all enemies foreign and domestic. (The ellipses are for the State of Arizona, because election worker is a state office.)

Yes, but you see, that assumes that both parties are present to keep the other one honest.

It was the 2010 or 2012 elections, when a friend of mine — a radical anarchist, who, being unemployed had nothing better to do that day — was a poll watcher for the Democrats at a Seattle precinct.

Since there was no Republican poll watcher, she got called over several times to be the “Republican” witness for an ambiguous ballot. I was horrified, but nobody else she told this to thought it was anything other than hilarious.

NUMBERED ballots? Are you crazy? That would risk violation of the privacy of the vote, the MOST SACRED right of Democracies!!!

Whereas having some party hack standing over you while you vote and harvesting that ballot is simple practicality; any suggestion that party volunteers would attempt to exercise any influence over a voter is a slander on the reputations of selfless Americans.

In my racist-boomer-deplorable county, we have to show our State-issued photo ID (Federal ID won’t do), and present our state-issued voter-ID card at our assigned polling station – you don’t get any choice – and they go through stacks of fan-fold printout, find your name, and cross it off before you get to vote. If your name isn’t in the printout, tough, try again next election.

Then, since they got rid of the paper ballots and tables of senior citizens collating the ballots, you walk over to the $SHINY Diebold machines, which assign your vote to whoever programmed them wants. No receipt, no tracking.

I like the way Texas is doing it. They had you a blank ballot. You put it into the voting machine. Do your votes on the machine, review them and then PRINT them on your ballot. Take the ballot to the scantron and put it in and your vote is counted. Solid paper trail. Your votes are printed on the ballot for you to see in human readable format. The Voting Machines are not hooked up to anything but a power cord. It is not perfect but better than normal computer voting.

In all seriousness, what good would a receipt from an electronic voting machine do you anyway? If someone wanted to program the machine to cheat, they’d probably also program it to provide a receipt with the votes you picked while actually selecting whatever the programmer told it to pick.

Ah, but you have a paper version that can be counted manually. And the machine that printed the paper vote isn’t the one that counts the votes. That’s the scanner. Yes, the scanner might be corrupted. But the paper vote is still available to be counted if there’s any concern.

Nope. Just not a fan of electronic voting. Doing it the old fashioned ways forces a more careful counting process that involves more people and moving parts, thus requiring more people to be involved in any tabulation fraud, and increasing the probability that any such attempts will get caught.

My point was to argue against your line “It doesn’t really make a difference what the slip of paper says since no one will pay any attention to it” by pointing out a real-life example of a recount that everyone paid attention to. And if there is a paper record that goes along with the electronic voting system, then any recount would have to use the paper record, because how do you “re”count an electronic vote? And any electronic voting system that does NOT have a paper record is simply worthless.

As someone who writes software for a living, I’m 100% in agreement with you on the stupidity of moving to an all-electronic voting system. The only good use for electronics in voting is a faster count via something like a Scantron system that scans in the ballots as they are fed into the boxes. Then the ballot count can be submitted quickly, but the paper ballots are there for anyone to double-check the electronic count anywhere and anytime they want to. (And at least 1% of precincts should be randomly chosen every year for an audit, to make sure that nobody has tampered with the reporting of the Scantron system).

As someone who writes software for a living, I’m 100% in agreement with you on the stupidity of moving to an all-electronic voting system.

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As someone who wrote software for a living, for 35 years, I agree 100% with this.

The odds of the computer voting = printed scanned voting, is minimal at best. Someone will screw up the computer count. Someway, somehow. Fool proof isn’t possible. The darn fools keep getting smarter.
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Do not care if it is possible. Just because it is possible doesn’t mean it should be done. Live Dinosaur Park anyone?
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Re-register, and one warm-and-breathing body with proof-of-citizenship required per registration. (They make you haul along a birth cert — at least if you’re not obviously foreign — to get a drivers license; let’s say if you’re too dumb to prove you can vote, you’re too dumb to prove you can drive…) And to prevent multi-state registrations (currently a significant problem) — this one thing needs a federal cross-check.

Ruth would allow others to ride him; including non-riders like Sharra (and talk to her; dragons can speak to non-riders if they choose to.) Red Star Rising had a female green dragon rider who fell in love with a harper, and her dragon would speak to him; it was a point of discussion of what would happen when the dragon in question rose to mate (answer: the lover of the other dragon rider of incompatible sexuality would be nearby, in case.)

Actually, I think the bit about dragons being saddled was addressed in the books about the first colonists; the saddles were developed by the horse-breeding folks and changed to address the whole being airborne.

All Right, THIS has gone quite far enough!!! All of the dragons discussed i refutation of the “no free riders” assertion have one thing in common: whether Pernian, Dragonlancer, or even Naomi Norvik’s Temeraire, They Are Fictional. They does what their writers tells them to do.

Thus no claims of their tolerance of saddles can be dispositive against a claim that “no real dragon” would tolerate such effrontery.

I loves you all like puppies, but you’ve gots to stop this tom-foolery.
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No, no, you’re doing it all wrong! It’s ‘Prime Real Estate’. The suckers investors don’t find out about the swamp, and the gators, until AFTER you’ve got their money!

Just like the Democrats, come to think. Although folks should have gotten a clue by now after seeing the swamps that have been sold to others.
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Some folks can be taught. Others can learn by example. The rest have to piss on the electric fence for themselves.

No, that’s “wetlands”, which make enviro-weenies squee with delight, as long as they don’t ever actually have to go there. Then they find out about fleas, ticks, chiggers, poisonous spiders, copperheads, water moccasins, and “imaginary don’t believe any eyewitness reports” alligators, who are totally not a spreading invasive species with big nasty teeth.

Naw, the gators are indigenous. Burmese Pythons and African Rock Pythons are the invasive species.
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Well, my Python Boot was too tight
I couldn’t get it off last night
A week went by and now it’s July
I finally got it off and my girlfriend cried, “You’ve got Stink-Foot!”

It’s difficult, since their ecological niche overlaps with raccoons. Whatever’s opossum-friendly is also raccoon-friendly. And you don’t want raccoons; besides tipping trash cans they’re destructive to property like frame buildings.

Opossums are travelers, not territorial. They’ll stay for as long as a few weeks when there’s food or a good nest, but they’ll move on after a while. Raccoons will move in and take over like little furry Mongols.

They seem to get along with cats, though. For a while, I had one hanging out in my backyard and on my porch. He came to eat at the dish that I put out for the semi-stray backyard cats. I called him Wellie, for the notable nose. The other outdoor/stray cats seemed to tolerate him. I think that they considered him as a malformed and ugly cat.

In Eric Frank Russel’s THE RABBLE ROUSERS he includes a gloriously funny account of the great Florida Land Boom. The book’s a little hard to come by, seeing as there was only ever one edition, but it’s worth the bother.

A lot of churches are having Tenebrae, and there’s EF and OF Holy Thursday tonight.

But the EF Holy Thursday from St. Mary’s in Warrington, England is on at 3 PM EST (LiveMass.net) and they managed to get together a full team of priests to chant it. (Because it’s religious order priests, much like EWTN.)

So you can watch recorded Tenebrae about now (such as from St. Mary of Pine Bluff, who had it this morning and is on YouTube), and then slide into Holy Thursday in the UK.

Oh, and there are a bunch of links on LiveMass.net. One of them says Breviary. It takes you to a site with the Latin/English Office for the day. If you click on Matutinum and then Lauds, those are the EF texts for Tenebrae on Holy Thursday, so you can follow along.

So basically, a bunch of psalms that relate to Jesus in the Garden and His Passion, as well as chanted readings from stuff like Lamentations. It’s very moving in a normal year; and it’s pretty hair-raising this year with the readings about Jerusalem lying empty, mockery of the just, and so on.

We’re Russian Orthodox. This Sunday will be Palm Sunday for us. Last Sunday we held the liturgy outside so people could “socially distance” themselves if they wanted to (a few did, most paid it little attention). This Sunday we’ll be inside as usual (rain is forecast) but the choir will be in the loft so their regular space can be used for people to spread out.

Next Sunday will be Pascha. I guarantee we will have liturgies Thursday evening, Friday for a good while (unsure whether Holy Friday Vespers and Lamentations will be combined or will be two separate services), and Saturday from about 11:30 PM till maybe 2 AM or so Sunday morning. We’ll do our best to follow the state and gubernatorial guidelines, but we will most definitely not be cancelling Pascha!

Good! I think that should be fine most places, and I wish we were doing it.

But given that our local guidelines are ten people, apparently our local Greek Orthodox parish is…um… well, it looks like they are not really talking about it, unless they have more info on their private Facebook. (I don’t think they update much, except at Greek Festival time.)

OTOH, their bishop is out of Detroit, and Detroit is going to have nothing but a priest and a chanter until Easter/Pascha is over.

Some time ago, the Orthodox priest then in Amarillo had a series of classes on church history and other things. Lots of people went, including DadRed. We ended up with a large collection of the writings of the Early Church Fathers and Eastern Fathers, and some very strange ideas for a family that’s now mostly Protestant. (There’s a few odd Jewish bits that surface on Mom’s side from time to time.)

I wonder if my local Russian or Greek Orthodox is holding services. We’ve long had a sort of unofficial co-communion. (At least I think it IS unofficial.) I know a priest who traveled in the East told us of attending Russian Orthodox services.

If someone Orthodox is in danger of death and asks for it, a Catholic priest can give him Communion, Last Rites, etc., without any conversion-y stuff. But they’re pretty definite on it has to be by request, and it’s not reciprocal as far as I know. (Because Catholic Baptism is not usually accepted by the Orthodox as Baptism that counts, or so I hear and I could be totally wrong.)

Now, there are Greek islands and other remote places where there has been unofficial co-Communion and funerals in times of emergency, war, Muslim invasions, etc., at least according to WWII books and such. But that’s the kind of thing where you ask no questions and tell no lies unless you live there. Maybe their bishops approved. I don’t live there.

Of course there are tons of Byzantine Catholics, Maronites, et al., who are in communion with the Catholic Church, no foolies. And for a while, a lot of people were kinda thinking about showing up for Byzantine Pascha even if they couldn’t receive (because Byzantine priests don’t like to give you Communion, unless they know you and know you’ve gone to Confession et al.). But in this neck of the woods, it looks like Eastern Easter is still going to be too darned soon.

So yeah, maybe we can have an awesome Pentecost, or Trinity Sunday, or Corpus Christi, or whatever.

The real concern is Easter Vigil. Catholic parishes that managed to eke out their chrism can still get their catechumens baptized, but most of them have more than priest plus nine, or priest, server, plus eight. Most Catholic archbishops had to postpone their Chrism Masses until after lockdown, for those parishes that can’t eke out their chrism (or get more from another parish). So sure, you could do emergency Baptisms, Confirmations, and such, but most folks are going to enter the Church on Pentecost, it looks like.

My intelligent but stupid friends with autistic son and autoimmune-compromised daughter figured out JUST RECENTLY that their children will never get the treatment they want/need under socialized (aka cheap) medicine. Yes, they paid out of pocket (via HSA account), but they have had the option to seek out different therapies that are no longer available to them under their new subsidized plan. One of them was complaining that “everyone should have access to X, Y and Z” with every plan. A friend in the healthcare field said, “No. What will happen is that NO ONE will have access to X and Y, and Z will be available only as deemed necessary by a bureaucrat who never has to speak to a parent or a patient.”

After a decade or so, no one will remember that X and Y were options. Maybe a few party members in good standing will have access, as always seems to be the case.

And of course, the same thing with every other aspect of life which the state takes over. To paraphrase the old divorce demand: You will NOT be kept in the manner to which you have become accustomed.

This is in regard to the article on your website “Covid 19 and US Mortality” by I. Ratel. The point of this article is very important, and I wanted to get the most recent updates for data used by the article. Do you have contact information for the author? I specifically wanted the most recent data on the deaths from all causes to see if the trend was continuing. Any help that you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

You will find the data the National Center for Health Statistics. The website is: cdc.gov/nchs/index.htm, The site is not the easiest to find info, but it is there. What do you expect from a government website?

They have a chart that shows weekly visits for Influenza-like illness. This year the chart starts with week 40 of 2019, to just before the current week. They list the # of visits per week. The peak week was week 6, at the start of February. Visits were 110,602. By week 9, the start of the panic, the number of visits drops to 73,719. Since Wuhan “flu” looks like flu, it would have been included in the visits. They knew this was a crock, but either this is phase 3 of the coup, or they just took advantage of a highly infectious virus with about 1% serious cases.

I believe this comes under the rubric, three is enemy action. They hid the lack of masks. They lied about masks not helping with a virus that is infectious without symptoms. They lied about the medicine that helps. They have succeeded in their goal to crash the American economy. They knew it was the only way to win in November, by blaming Trump.

“The truly liberal mind is by definition uncertain; it admits it may be wrong, but once set and the decision made the wavering stops, and no sort of hell can sway it.”
— D.F. Jones, The Fall of Colossus

Yes, the majority of Americans are not paranoid, and analytical in the right ways. You always fight the ongoing existential conflict with the population you have, not the one you wish you had.

We mostly recognize a certain essential leeways for states of emergency, and that disease can be a pretty serious problem. As a people we’ve neither seriously thought about what those necessities might be, nor drilled on appropriate reactions enough, nor really grokked the limits of numerical modeling and the description/prescription difference. So, we freeze like untrained infantry, and take our time figuring things out. No one can prep excellently for every individual contingency, and in a free country people can choose not to do it with their recreational budget.

Sumter was April, and per wiki, it doesn’t look like the action really picked up until June. This isn’t the Boog, Lord willing and the Dems don’t coup, but we were as prepared for it as we were for the First Boogaloo Between The States, and our response might be fairly judged on the same timescales. “Lincoln didn’t have Sherman marching on Georgia May 1861, so the Union cause is lost” is a more hyperbolic comparison than is really fair, but the same error.

After the Pacific War, Jap fighters were found holding out in the jungles for decades. Free men can exceed the slaves of a tyrant in bloody-minded resolve and fanaticism. And should worse come, there will be no legitimate chain of command who can order our surrender. But that is 11/11/1919 talk, when maybe the Arch-Duke has been shot, but the Entente hasn’t even ordered mobilization yet.

We have a long careful journey in front of us, and we do not know what crossroads we will take. We needn’t get excited yet from assumptions about the final destination.

It’s not over. It’s not even close to being over. You’ll have to kill each and every one of us to end it, and even then it won’t quit. Because America is more than a nation. It’s an ideology. A code. A set of values. An idea. And you cannot kill an idea.

Chesterton has a “ha-ha, only serious” essay about how being American is more like being a member of a religion than being a subject or a citizen. (Which of course means he would have enjoyed the Usaian thing.) We don’t have patriotism or civics so much as we have belief and articles of belief. The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are written as much like the Scriptures as they are like English common law.

Yes, but you have to have your kindle e-mail and then you have to find the thing on your kindle since it will never show up on books. It’s a relatively minor hassle as hassles go, but why add it? They have one job with a book reader: Making it easy to read books. One. Job.

Once you destroy the sanctity of the ballot box the people have but one recourse left.
“If you guys are going to allow this, you’d better stock up on guns and ammo.”
Sweetie, the current panic buyers of guns and ammo are all lefties caught with their knickers down.
Those of us of a USAian bent have been tooled up for years now, at least since the reign of that red diaper baby, and certainly when conventional wisdom had Shrillary a shoe in for POTUS.
Here’s the thing. The left all think that firearms are a magic wand, wave them and people are compelled to obey, when in fact they are a rather tempermental power tool requiring considerable skill to operate. And much the same for law enforcement and the military, with the additional consideration that our people in service are well trained and instructed that they are required by international law to refuse to obey an illegal order.
Now no reasonable person wants this. But reason has no place in the left’s narrative, certainly not of late. It would seem that what they desperately desire is to bring us to our knees, crush our spirit, and wipe from the Earth all traces of American exceptionalism. All so that a grand and glorious global socialist paradise can rise from the ashes. What will really happen is that once the tipping point is reached and Americans can no longer trust our election process we will resort to the tried and true solutions that resolved our issues with our British lords and masters not so very long ago.

After the first couple of months most of their ammunition came from U.S. military supplies which according to some international law have to be FMJ because expanding bullets are ‘inhumane’. Faith hates .223 FMJ, she does. She might be a tad happier with .223 softnose.
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Always, always have a Plan O — for Oh Shit!

And it is a post apocalypse dystopia, with an over the top arbitrary and capricious rule of law. An American cop show turned up to eleven by a Brit, who probably thought the US was more violent than it really was.

And it ran as a comic for decades. If you run anything for a long period of time with continuity, and without reboots, you wind up humanizing some of the characters. The guy who invented Dredd can no doubt can recall the earliest parts of the process, can still see the pastiche in him.

I first learned of Dredd on wikipedia. Then I read the book for a Judge Dredd RPG. Most recently I watched the 2012 movie. For all that he lives in a mad world, there is a man who tries for sanity, for justice, beneath that helmet.

But yeah, Gunslinger Girl, Tank Police, Kerberos, and Dredd are excellent “look how ignorant I am” countertrolling to the ‘criminal justice reform types’.

Assuming from the comic that the creator is a huge Lefty, who created the story as a typical “Cautionary Tale” about law and order conservatism.

Lefties don’t understand the audience. People like Judge Dread because he’s morally incorruptible and utterly devoted to the law. Lefties consistently fail to get that. They think conservatism is about hatred and the use of force.

New York Lefties are getting some education in their failures today. Everything reported for COVID-19 is the battle between scofflaws who won’t self-isolate and the Block Captians who are going full Vichy on them.

New York Lefites are beginning to show their roots and embrace the Full Big Brother scenario, with police roadblocks and inspections on every street corner where they make sure it is “necessary” for you to be out.

Week One of the roadblocks and spot-checks, “necessary” will be determined by the Committee for Public Health. Week Two it will be a nod and a wink, Week Three it’ll be five bucks or an egg.

Week Eight is the zombie apocalypse where the starving masses raid the warehouses in their millions. Because that’s how long it’ll take to make Manhattan and the boroughs run through their on-hand inventory.

End result, Sarajevo.

You asked for it, you got it. Toyota.

But I strongly doubt the rest of the USA will allow it. If necessary NYC authorities will be subject to a hearty conquering by whoever is handy about Week 5 of the Full Big Brother event.

They might saw California off and let it drift away into the ocean though. Nobody likes California.

New Jersey is doing this as a state. Even small towns have threatened mass arrests of people if they do things like hold prayer vigils outside of hospitals in support of people who are sick and the people caring for them.

You forgot seeds! The online market garden oriented seed sellers are swamped right now. Some shut down sites, others have limited sales to the existing commercial customers “for 2 weeks”.
I call it the Year of the Homestead.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I can’t raise food as cheaply as I can buy it for anything I have tried. Sometimes it comes out the same sometimes it costs a bit more. I am happier when I garden, so I do it anyway, at the scale that I can, learning as I go, (or is that grow? My garden doesn’t have legs). I am one who likes the land and the independence.

Probably depends how much water costs you, and how much your labor time is worth. My labor is worth not-much, and I’m here regardless. My irrigation costs $25/year, but I get to bring it down from the ditch (costs if I pump it, not if I use gravity, but then I need to drag a thousand feet of hose up the hill). Beyond that it costs me for seeds (if I don’t have some saved), or occasionally a purchased plant. I get more squash, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, peas, carrots, melons, and corn than I can eat out of a 35′ x 30′ space, done a bit haphazardly, but starting with good soil. (I don’t eat beans, but lordy, green beans will produce like tribbles.) Plus lots of apples and wild plums over yonder, of varying quality. Need to plant a few better ones.

My main problem is storage where the durn things won’t sprout before I can use ’em. Been drying and freezing tomatoes (five gallons compresses down to about a quart).

At any rate, this is not a huge scale, but you can guess what I don’t buy anymore. Would you like some zucchini? 🙂

A while back I was penciling out a rainwater collection system for irrigation and for prepping for The Big One. But water is so cheap here in Seattle that adding the gutters and pipes and filters to the water barrels would have taken something like 15 years to pay for themselves as opposed to just filling the barrels from the hose.

I enjoy vegetable gardening, but a friend of mine wasn’t far wrong when he said that (at urban scale) it was a method for spending scores of hours working in order to save $17.69 at the store. 😀

I usually end up with more tomatoes (esp. cherry) than I can eat, but the one year I tried to grow corn I got like three ears off of ten plants. Seattle is not good corn country.

Mostly it’s second-order prepping by skill building. Another few years and I’ll have enough skill points in Agriculture (average, Int) that I’ll be able to convert my whole lot to veggies and succeed in a semi-SHTF situation.

I’ve noticed that the further it is from field corn, and the smaller the average ear, the less demanding it gets. Last summer we had not enough sun and too much rain, but I got plenty of 8″ sweet corn, so long as I hand-pollinated all the ears (I just bang pollen into a bucket and drizzle it on). I’d planted a sweet and a supersweet (violating the rule that one shouldn’t cross-pollinate types, or you get field corn… it was all sweet), and some seed saved from “Burpee’s Triple Crown Yellow Hybrid” (supersweet)… some of which put up three stalks per seed (must still be some primitive genes there). Part of the trick seems to be to plant a little earlier than you think you should.

This year I’m going to try some “New Mama Super Sweet” from Adaptive Seeds in Oregon. Apparently it was developed by “dump a bunch of varieties together, open-pollinate, and keep the good producers”, so it might be more amenable to Seattle’s climate.

“Last year in Oregon, 963 people fell off their bicycles… and drowned.”
— bumper sticker seen during the early ’80s El Niño years

Between the slugs and the assorted molds, tomatoes are a non-starter. But mostly I’m running up against my too-wealthy and foo!ish younger self who built her land to be a wild-life, and in particular, a willd bird sactuary. wild

I’m not saying it can’t be done by anyone. But I tend to get distracted by shiney new things and there goes any actual net savings! Plus I haven’t gardened long, so beginner’s mistakes and tooling up add their bits. We stopped buying cherry tomatoes though. I’m trying several different varieties of tomatoes to see which one is our favorite beefsteak, which I like for drying, etc, ditto for carrots and greens.

Mainly with tomatoes I’ve found I don’t like the heirlooms — too soft and too bland, and too much snot. And I’d never liked cherry tomatoes at ALL until I found “Ferry-Morse Supersweet 100VF hybrid” which are freakin’ delicious. (And despite being a hybrid, appears to breed true; random feral offspring were just like the parent.) Good trellis tomato; it’s a climber. Climbed up my corn all by itself.

One trick for a short growing season… when it looks like you’ve got a good crop set but fall is in sight, nip off all the growthy tips so the plant can concentrate on finishing up the fruit it’s got instead of making more and more blossoms. (I don’t usually have to do this; the grasshoppers do it for me. Except the Burpee Heatwave Hybrid [I think it was]… foliage smells like gasoline, and even starving bugs won’t touch it.)

Unfortunately the most delicious eating tomato I’ve found, a clustered type, doesn’t breed true — the offspring are more like a Roma. Decent enough but not in the same class…but sure made a lot of ’em.

Tomatoes will not only grow in a bucket, you can bring ’em in for the winter and they’ll continue producing (most are self-pollinating, despite being attractive to bees).

I don’t know how it is wherever you are, but around here (east Tennessee), farm stores have everything you could possibly want. I bought a pound of yellow onion sets for $0.99 at RuralKing last week, and there were plenty more in the bin. Also red and white onions. I didn’t look farther as those were all I wanted, but it didn’t look at all depleted.

Five gallon or so pots, bag of potting soil, starter tomato or pepper plants, sunlight and water.
Intent is not to feed yourself, just add a bit of variety and fresh produce to the diet.
And a crossbow for the occasional deer that wanders by. I’d bet either of your boys would have very little trouble turning a carcass into its component parts. Other than organ meat, venison really should hang for a while to improve the flavor.

if you’re into Armageddon prepping you can live on potatoes. 10 pounds a day skin and all. if you can get some buttermilk you’ll gain weight. oh and a shotgun for anyone who tries to take your potatoes. I

Cooking Out of This World, edited by Anne McCaffrey. (I got mine used, you can’t have it!) Karen Anderson tells the story, as I think Boucher was recently deceased in 1973. Wildside Press did a reprint in 2006.

Anyway, it was the Sixties, and Karen called Boucher because she knew Poul was busy at work, and that Boucher was an amateur gourmet cook. Boucher basically showed up and took command of their garage (where the deer was hung) and their kitchen (when it was ready to disassemble). Karen documented all the steps (in case she needed to know them again, I guess), and the book was designed to help any other sf fans who wound up with a dead deer and no idea what to do with it.

McCaffrey also did another more recent cookbook called Serve It Forth (which is kinda confusing, because there’s a famous SCA cookbook called that), but I’ve never seen it so I don’t know what’s in it. More sf writer recipes, I think.

We have bears too, foxes and coyotes. We live about 40 miles outside the city now near something called the great swamp as opposed to the dismal swamp. Place names in NJ tend to describe the place very well. it is a swamp in the north and piney in the south and our governor is a fascist idiot doing his best bunker scene.

Colorado it would be Black Bear. Grizzlies in lower 48 are North Cascades, Glacier/Waterton, Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, South to Grand Tetons. But don’t roam further south than that, even in the Rockies. Not sure what is keeping them from roaming down the Rockies themselves. Nor am I sure if they roam into the mountains of N. Idaho, out of Canada, except I don’t think they are over the border in Canada in that area.

Possible. If so PTB aren’t admitting it. The Grizzly range map stops them well short of the southern Wyoming border. Black bear boars can get huge when no grizzly’s around. Of coarse black bears can run the full gambit of colors, from black to blond, as can the grizzly. Saw one that was larger than a huge black Angus steer (open range). That is one big bear. South Umpqua NF. Know darn well it wasn’t a grizzly.

But that would imply that some group, probably a government agency, has been re-establishing them in that habitat without informing the local citizens! That seems highly unlikely probable.

–
Exactly PTB could have reestablished without informing anyone. Wouldn’t surprise me they’d try that in the Wallowa/Blues or 3 sisters & surrounding wildernesses. Sacrifice a few PCT hikers or BSA members … to the cause.
–

Raised beds. Just nail a few planks together in the desired depth and shape (long and narrow is easier on the back) and leave the bottom open. You can dysmangle and recycle old pallets for this, and they’re free, and usually fir which is somewhat rot-resistant. Make sure your beds can drain at the bottom, given concrete soil usually doesn’t (if necessary put your beds up on rocks, cinder blocks broken lengthwise, patio blocks, or what have you — not wood flat on the ground, that will draw termites). Pretty much everything that doesn’t make a huge deep root will put up with being grown this way. Don’t even need to get this fancy for potatoes; just drop some growthy ones on the ground and pile dirt over ’em, and occasionally pile more dirt around ’em so the taters stay covered.

Fill your beds with cheap generic soil from Ace (best of what I’ve tried), manure that’s aged past all recognition, or whatever good dirt you can filch. Elm and ash leaves compost into the best possible soil in less than two years (just smash, water, and ignore), and no one minds if you make away with their fall bags of leaves. (My garden used to be a corral, tho hasn’t seen a horse in 20 years.)

Lots of fruit trees tolerate being containered too — main thing is don’t overwater ’em, as they don’t like wet feet. Lemon, apricot, plum, and some apples do pretty well this way. Citrus and pit fruit reproduce true from seed, apples don’t.

If you can get sawdust from UNTREATED wood, like from the log sawmill — it makes a great bulk soil amendment. (I once grew an elm tree 30 feet tall in a barrel of sawdust.) Mixed about half and half with old leaves decays down to a nice light loam. (Don’t use oak or walnut, leaves or sawdust. Growth inhibitors…)

Well-dried grass makes a good mulch and soil amendment, but fresh clippings will cut off oxygen to the soil, so let ’em dry first.

We got our tomato and summer squash seeds a while ago. I’m going to try to get carrot seeds next trip into town. Last year we did 3 of the outside raised beds for summer squash, but we’ll do 6 this year. I don’t think we’ll be able to get a chicken setup done while chicks are readily available. Chick days started in February, and I haven’t been to the farm supply store since.

(We couldn’t find Siberia tomatoes at retail last year (heirloom variety, cold tolerant, origin is obvious), so we got a reasonable quantity last year from a New England bulk seller. They should germinate well.)

I wasn;t aware of that. We had good luck with Siberia, but couldn’t fins any last year. What we found (New England Seeds [neseed dot com]) was Siberian, which at least one seller claims is better than Siberia. We’ll see. We got a half ounce; several years worth

I bought seeds in February, along with the hand sanitizer I was afraid I was going to need.

Suburbia as a pattern for living is looking pretty good right now, isn’t it? Little plot of land for veggies, car for transport, enough space between you and Mr. Jones next door that you don’t catch the flu when he coughs.

Funny how all those suburb-hating planned urban environment assholes never thought of something like this, eh?

We’re starting to see the results of the first serology tests. Berenson has them which is one reason to follow him, he points to information and one can follow up and confirm. Heinsberg, a town up by Cologne has a 15% infection rate, which drops the fatality rate to 37 BP. They are said to be among the hardest hit parts of Germany and the study started at the end of March. I don’t know the demographic but Germany has a very bad age pyramid so US rates might differ.

Look for panic among the Acela crowd when they see the infection rates but don’t see the fact that it drops the death rate down to flu territory. I’ve already seen some idiot on it not being sufficient for herd immunity, which term they can’t have heard more than two weeks ago. Herd immunity would only really matter if this thing was a mass killer and, while its undeniably nasty, it doesn’t seem to be that.

What I’m looking for is data that show co-morbidity by age by deaths and in the overall population. So far it’s all mixed together so I don’t know if the co morbidity actually contributes or not. it should on the face of it but it might well be age and then just random chance. no luck so far beyond a suspicion that it’s just the fickle finger of fate if you’re under, say, 80 and being 80 if that’s what you are.

My area has a really strange pattern – the bulk of the cases thus far are ages 10-40. Ten percent age 9 and below. I’d love to see how the infection pattern ran, because of the 90ish cases in the urban area, 9 got it outside of the region, and the rest are community spread.

My SWAG is that people in that age group went to Mardi Gras. I have the Oregon results, and the spread looks different. WordPress and tables, wish me luck.

Age group Cases Hospitalized Death
0 to 19________26_____5_______0
20 to 29______133____16_______0
30 to 39______186____20_______0
40 to 49______233____48_______0
50 to 59______226____55_______1
60 to 69______223____84_______7
70 to 79______129____55______12
80 to 999______83____41______18
Total________1239___324______38

(It looks OK in draft, lord help me in publish…)

From 2010 census numbers, that puts us at 86 fatal/10 million. NY seems to be somewhere in the 3000/10M range.

It really has much more to do with the local testing protocols. If your area, for whatever reason, decided that testing was more important for younger people, you will have more cases. Where I am, testing protocol says test only high risk. That means no kids are getting tested, or damn few, so we have no cases in the under 18. Imagine that.

I’ll have to dig and see if those numbers are available for my state/region. A nice improvement on the local news last night was the current COVID stats (~230 statewide) + “and 15% required hospitalization.”

thank you all. A 37 BP death rate is a 99.63% survival rate and that’s Germany who swings way older than we do.

They keep going on and on about co morbidity and, well, i have some. The only report is have seen so far (Italy) seems to show shows that the death rates by e.g., diabetes by age are the same or close to the proportion of diabetes by age in the population. If true, the co morbidity doesn’t matter it’s just a function of its presence in the community.

if I find something, I’ll post since it would be very interesting especially considering that the Gauleiters want to lock up all the (e.g.,) fat people for their own good.

Next on my list of things to do is to write well-reasoned letters to my state representative and state senator imploring them to firmly decide what they’re doing for November instead of this half-assed last minute garbage that we pulled with the primary.

Here’s my vote reform guidelines. No early voting, at all. No vote by mail. Absentee ballots only available by request, with a valid reason for inability to come to the polling place in person required. All voters must show photo ID to verify their identity. Voter rolls purged at least every 3 years, and preferably every year. Voting machines allowed, but each vote must be printed out on paper for the voter to verify for accuracy before the paper vote is scanned into the vote tally, and the printed vote then placed in the lockbox for possible later recounts.

Whoops, forgot one. Once the votes are certified and the lockboxes transported to the central location (county courthouse, usually) and verified to have been received, no other “found” ballots may be accepted. Any recounts must be done just from the verified lockboxes.

The dyed fingers should be each time, really. For not only that reason, but also should we get mixed up in something again where we (re?)introduce voting to the area, the dyed finger bit is not “just for them.”

Right now, I suppose some nutter would whinge that a communal dye-pot is a disease vector. So sanitizer before dipping, let the dye dry, and wash your hands.

Why? What do they offer that counting paper ballots right out in front of everyone doesn’t?

Our old system, volunteers did it at card tables at the polls, right out in front of God and everybody, and you could look over their shoulders if you wanted and make your own count. Every half hour the poll official called the results in. Half an hour after the polls closed the counting was done and results announced, half a day ahead of the statutory requirement.

The Diebold machines supposedly allow “someone” to monitor the voting in real time. I see no useful purpose in that. If the media wants to do minute-by-minute reporting. why should *I* pay for it? They can put stringers at some polls and count votes for themselves.

I don’t have a problem with paper ballots and manual counts. But so long as there are paper ballots it really doesn’t matter if they’re marked up by hand or printed out by a voting machine, so long as the voter can examine them and verify they’re what he intended before the vote’s cast. If they’re automatically scanned, no problem so long as the paper ballots are retained and secured for possible recounts later.

Nobody’s going to look at the paper ballots unless they can justify a recount, and in many jurisdictions, the challenger has to pay a substantial fee for a recount.

If an election is close, you just need to twiddle things a little bit, which is easy enough when you have real-time control over every logged vote. And if you get challenged and caught, you just shrug and roll your eyes; as far as I know “software errors” have yet to result in prison terms for anyone.

We’re now operating on a zero-trust system; unless each step can be proven to be accurate and complete, my default assumption is that it is falsified.

Paper ballots can be used as a cross-check on machine tabulation — they may be able to hack the bar coding to produce desired results but if the paper ballots — with candidate names clearly printed — can be tallied to confirm the machine count you’ve established a valuable cross-reference against funny business.

Ballot harvesting is a whole different kettle of fish, of course, and the best preventative against that is to require, to the extent practical, in person voting. Absentee votes ought be accompanied by a signed affidavit, one for each ballot submitted. False affidavit or vote fraud is subject to fine and forfeiture of voting rights for up to twelve years.
–

I’ve advocated for a long time to do a multi-tiered voting system web:
1 – Machine voting (to avoid the issues like hanging chads and partially filled boxes), where a final screen is shown to the voter with all his choices, before recording and printing out a filled-in ballot.
2 – Paper copy is taken to reader which also records the votes electronically (also displaying the voter’s choices as it does).
3 – Paper copy is deposited in a lockbox which counts the ballot deposited (1 per ballot).
The voting machines can be networked together (hard wire, locally only), and the ballot readers can be networked together (same), but not to each other.

So, when the count happens, you gather the electronic totals from the voting machines, AND you gather the electronic totals from the readers, AND you gather the paper lockboxes, and you take them to a central location. There, the electronic data are dumped into different systems for tabulation in isolation, then they are compared, as well as compared to the paper ballot count (total number of ballots). Discrepancies require the paper ballots to be RE-scanned AND to be hand tabulated.

If there are discrepancies between the electronic records and the paper ballots, the people in charge of the electronic systems go to jail.

Works for me … Voter Id required too, where you sign the voter rolls, and note the Driver’s License or State ID #, and residential address. One presumes that duplicate names would have different state licenses/id’s. My maiden name is unique, at least in the PNW, down south, probably not. Married name is not unique. Same small clinic, they found 5, before they found my file; before computerized. Three with the same middle initial. Now they would bring up the entire list & ask for residential address. Back then we figured out quickly it was safer to add both my full middle & maiden names to the file.

When I was working we’d have clients call and state “Hi, this is ‘d'”. I’d answer the phone, and state “Hi. Which ‘d’? I know it isn’t me.” Always got a laugh. There were 10 or so clients with my first name who called in regularly. A couple I recognized, generally by voice. But not always. It took me a few seconds to switch from programming to support mode. Some days longer than the others. Co-worker’s were never a problem. Most my jobs I was not only the only ‘d’ on staff, I was the only female.

“The president keeps taking the stage and as opposed to what Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and medical health professionals are telling us, pushing this drug,” Harris said on The View. “He’s got to stop — he’s not — we don’t want a drug pusher for president.”

Hydroxychloroquine is an anti-malarial drug that anecdotal reports indicate has been effective in treating some coronavirus patients. There has not, however, been conclusive clinical evidence of its efficacy. The New York Times on Tuesday touted Trump’s “small personal financial interest” in a French company that produces the drug, even though Trump’s investment in the company amounts to roughly $1,000.

“Let me translate for you. ‘Widespread voter fraud’ really means a lot of ‘those kinds of people’ voting,” Rather said on Twitter Wednesday.

Rather’s tweet, which was retweeted more than 20,000 times, was widely panned on Twitter, including a comment from political commentator and Nevada congressional candidate Mindy Robinson.

“No, it means I live in a state where anyone can sign up without an ID, receive a ballot, and mail it in anonymously however many times they want, completely unchecked,” she wrote. “You wouldn’t vote for a prom queen this way…but this is how we’re supposed to vote for our country’s leaders?”

[SNIP]

New Mexico, a state that is weighing a mail-in voting system due to the coronavirus, reportedly has thousands of ineligible voters on their rolls, including many dead people.

“Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to statewide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it,” President Trump said on Twitter this week. “Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.”

On the other hand, a New York Times article headlined “Why Republicans Are So Afraid of Vote-by-Mail” argues that Republicans are running a campaign to “impose restrictions that disproportionately affect people of color, the poor, and younger voters, under the banner of combating voter fraud — which is exceedingly rare.”
[END EXCERPT]
–

‘Those kind of people’ — so, the dead, illegal aliens, and the ones registered in multiple precincts?
———————————
My grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.

I feel like I’m standing in 4 feet of water watching millions of people floundering and drowning around me all screaming for a life preserver from the government and every time I say “just put your feet down” they scream back “science denier we are all in danger of drowning” …

I was being generous … 🙂 on second thought we are all on our stomachs on the ground and water is starting to bubble up around our face and instead of … you know, standing up … people are screaming for the government to help … and for 20 million Americans the government just stood on their backs …

That’s the way that the world goes ’round
You’re up one day, the next you’re down
It’s half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown
That’s the way that the world goes ’round
That’s the way that the world goes ’round
That’s the way that the world goes ’round
–

I was screeched at by a Karen at the grocery store today for not wearing mask and gloves and not caring if somebody was less than 6 feet away.

Karen: “COVID19 KILLS!!!”
Me: “I had it back in January. No big deal.”
Karen: “NO YOU DINNINT YOU’D BE DEAD!!!”

Wouldn’t listen to why all the numbers they’re throwing around are just bullshit. Statistics was part of my JOB for about twenty years, but Dear Karen ‘just knew’ better.

And, no grocery bags. No bags in the store, and you couldn’t bring bags in. ‘Directive’ from the state, or the county, or some other branch of the Nanny State.

Every time I think they have reached the outer limits of stupid, they manage to outdo themselves.
———————————
Not everybody should go to college. Some folks, you send ’em to college and you just wind up with an educated idiot.

I have a very faint hope that this pot of swine manure leads to a repeal of the Oregon plastic bag ban, but I wouldn’t expect the legislature to do so. Might show up as an initiative once TPTB let us get close enough to carry a clipboard.

I’m wondering if I had it in Jan … a cold that lingered for 3wks, and only let go when I started taking heavy duty night time cough/cold medicine. No worse than any other cold. My sister also had a cold that lingered for about 3wks, and she’s finally shaken that.

Y’know, I’d like to believe that I’d be able to respond reasonably to that, but I’m afraid the best options for my realistic response would be either “F off, you hysterical bully” or “avoid the crazy person.”

I was debating saying this, given Sarah’s temper and all, but I think it bears consideration. (She probably won’t kill me. ~:D )

The USA is very big on rights. The Constitution guarantees them in law. It is perilous for politicians to curtail them, bad things are known to happen to those who infringe.

I’ve seen approving references to the pastor who plans to have a mega-church meeting for Easter because “Right To Peacefully Assemble.” I don’t see too many people asking what his responsibility to his congregation is, to keep them from catching Wuhan Flu and spreading it to their friends, family and random strangers unfortunate enough to meet them.

Canada, we’re a little different. Personal rights, we don’t have those. (No, you screamer, we really don’t. Look it up. Notwithstanding Clause.) We have “common usage” and equality before the law. If a politician or cop or whatever breaks common usage and treats one guy differently than another, we don’t like that. We remember it, and when the time comes, we vote against it.

What we are big on is personal responsibility. You do what you are supposed to do, because you’re supposed to do it. Line up in an orderly fashion. Don’t cut in line. Don’t take more than your share. Don’t try to pay off the cop. Don’t be an asshole just because there’s no cop around. Et cetera. That’s our culture.

You want a crash course on Canadian Culture, try cutting the line at the beer store in Small Town Anywhere on a random Friday night. The people in line will tell you to go to the back. They will not be gentle. The counter guy will refuse to serve you. If you get loud some hockey player will pound you. For sure. That’s the real Canada. Like the Scots, but so much worse.

Enter Covid-19. We all got behind the social distancing thing… except apparently in Toronto, where lots and lots of people have not internalized the “personal responsibility” part of our culture. (The “Read Until Offended” crowd of camel-sniffers are directed to take particular note that I did not say “immigrants.” Lots of the pictures are of -white- Torontonians being assholes. This is not about immigrants. This is about Canadian culture.)

Here in Hooterville Ont. people are being super responsible. They really grabbed the ball and ran with it. We collectively understand that it is each individual’s RESPONSIBILITY to keep our germs to ourselves. Staying home sucks. Wearing gloves and masks is stupid and embarrassing. We are doing it anyway, because that’s what we need to do. Its our responsibility.

But in Canada it is the government’s RESPONSIBILITY to have a clue what efforts the remarkably cooperative public should pursue. And we all know that they -know- what they should be doing, because we already went through all this shit in 2003 with SARS and again recently with H1N1. It is the government’s responsibility to have all the kit the country needs to function, organized, laid out and ready to go. That’s their fucking job, after all. It is what we pay them to do.

But they’re not ready, they’re not clued in, and they don’t have the stuff we need. Mega-fail. (And it is starting to look like they made some kind of unholy alliance with Communist China. All I can say is, they better hope that’s not true.)

So really, the Canadian government is no longer just fucking around playing stupid Liberal SJW politics. At this point they are in breach of fundamental cultural values.

The Supreme Medical Establishment represented by Health Canada and the various provincial health ministries likewise is not living up to their cultural responsibilities. They’re useless, AND they are frantically trying to cover their own asses with legalistic bullshit while being visibly useless.

Individual physicians are stepping into the breach to try to save lives while the leadership struts and frets about randomized controlled double-blind trials. So far, my reports are that hospitals are serving up worse care than staying home. They won’t even give you oxygen in the ambulance because they’re afraid it will aerosolize the virus and infect the crew. Who don’t have masks, because shortage. Too bad so sad, sick dying person.

Therefore IMHO we have two cultural institutions that are pissing away their political capital at the highest rate in living memory. The government as a whole, which at all levels from federal to local is ABJECTLY failing to manage this pandemic in a functional fashion. And the medical leadership, who are playing politics and CYA and #OrangeManBad in the middle of a lethal disease pandemic.

This will have serious repercussions on Canada as a culture. We, collectively, are used to trusting the government. Now we are starting not to. That’s going to be a long standing change in attitude.

Canadians are a pretty conservative bunch, generally speaking. Very into that Protestant Work Ethic and all the other stuff that SJWs like to call Whiteness.

But we are not Americans. We’re a bit suspicious of things and people, frankly. We don’t like to spend money to make money. We like things to be organized and predictable. That’s why Canadians have been all about “Peace, Order and Good Government” historically. The odd bit of thievery can be ignored if the main things are functioning. People have work, there’s food, there’s no guys running around killing people and breaking stuff.

It looks like America, but its not. I lived both places long enough that the differences jump out at me all the time.

This is why the Liberals are dead-set on importing a new population to replace the one that’s already here. We’re not going to vote for what they want, which seems to be feudalism, pretty much.

I’d say they’ve about shot their bolt on that whole thing. If importing people wholesale from around the world has turned out like this, then the gates are going to be closing. One way or another, they will.

“pastor who plans to have a mega-church meeting for Easter because “Right To Peacefully Assemble.” I don’t see too many people asking what his responsibility to his congregation is,”
You don’t Understand, the only way he could or should be held responsible is he had some way for forcing or compelling them to attend, he does not. It is up to EACH person to attend or not. It is THEIR responsibility to protect themselves and their Friends, not the Pastors.
The “Right To Peacefully Assemble.” is an INDIVIDUAL right NOT a Group Right.

There is only one place that can force you to show up and that is the call up of the unorganized militia, for the rest is if you want to show up.

“You don’t Understand, the only way he could or should be held responsible is he had some way for forcing or compelling them to attend, he does not.”

Yeah, this is not one of those “under the law” things I’m talking about. This is more like the Law of Gravitation level. Gravity always pulls -down-. With your individual “Right to Peaceful Assembly” also comes the “Responsibility to not kill people by assembling.” As with the 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms comes the responsibility to learn how to manage yourself and your weapon so as not to be a menace to others.

Everybody wants to talk about your right to buy a gun. NOBODY wants to talk about your responsibility to spend time and money at the range learning how to shoot and maintain that gun you bought. But that responsibility still rests on you, even if there’s no law that specifically says so. Its the same responsibility you have not to shoot your wife by accident because your heard a noise at night. Sometimes that takes some training. Finger OFF trigger, safety ON, muzzle pointed in safe direction, check your backstop, all that stuff we aren’t born knowing.

So yes, Pastor Blowhard has a right to hold church services at his megachurch. But no, he doesn’t get to ignore his moral RESPONSIBILITY to make sure its safe. Back of the hand comes with the front of the hand.

Canadians come down a little more on the responsibility side. Its how we are. Don’t cut in line at the beer store. Yes you -can- do it but no you really shouldn’t, and we’re all going to be hostile and maybe kinda dangerous if you do. What can I say, its a weird country.

Pennsylvania, for one, is rapidly approaching what I like to call “Twisted Sister Mentality.”

i.e. “We’re Not Gonna Take It! No! We Ain’t Gonna Take It! We’re Not Gonna Take It Anymore!”

Our governor [SPIT!] just declared that all schools are now closed for the remainder of the academic calendar. To say people are pissed would be an understatement. Given that his guidelines for what constituted a “non-life-sustaining” business were so overarching and yet simultaneously vague to the point of uselessness, clarifications were equally vague and outright contradictory, and waivers to said guidelines appeared to be handed out arbitrarily, he’d burned out a lot of political goodwill with the voters. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this latest move alienates him from the Teachers Unions, which were the institutions that had bought and paid for both of his elections.

It sounds like even Philly hates his guts now, and it takes a lot for Philly to genuinely hate a Democrat. I wager that the Republicans will do well in the next round of statewide elections.

I used to live in the “T,” till about 10 years ago when we moved to Tennessee. It’s good to hear that Pennsyltucky might manage to throw off the Philly vote fraud machine and come closer to representative government.

Here in Michigan (hello, neighbour!), the governor let pot shops stay open as essential services. WJR reported that they were hiring people to deal with demand.

Yesterday our governor declared nurseries and gardening centers nonessential and forced box stores to cordon off their non-food areas. It’s spring, and the window is closing on planting seeds and stopping weeds, slugs, etc. Lawncare is also out, which means in my area that one of the easy ways to control mosquitoes and ticks is gone.

It really has much more to do with the local testing protocols. If your area, for whatever reason, decided that testing was more important for younger people, you will have more cases. Where I am, testing protocol says test only high risk. That means no kids are getting tested, or damn few, so we have no cases in the under 18. Imagine that.

I live in Philly. The closing of the liquor stores is going to drive people over the top. Also, I see people on FB (my not-so-accurate-anecdotal-data collecting source) who are die-hard Ds (this is Philly after all) who are *going after* Wolf. His back and forth orders are out in the open and people are finally starting to realize what exactly they voted for. I hope that PA rises up and takes back their state and tells Philly liberals to shut the f up.

I used to live just outside Philly (I’m over near The Burgh now). And I must confess that Fecalbook is my anectodal data collection source as well. The only one of my Philly friends who is still adamantly and vocally supporting Wolf is a former teacher who jumped off the deep end into the Crazy Leftist Pool about the time Obama was reelected. Everyone else has shut up at worst or is royally pissed at best.

Meanwhile, my dipshit Township Municipal Authority shut off the water in my building – and possibly the whole neighborhood – for multi-hour stretches both yesterday and today, both times with zero warning. And they appear to be using COVID-19 as an excuse for not issuing any advanced notice, not answering their phones, and not responding to email inquiries.

Again, people are pissed. Especially my property management firm, because the tenants have been blowing up their phone lines and email inboxes, and the Authority hasn’t told them jack sh*t.

The Authority was a bunch of petty tyrant bureaucrats before this mess started, and I daresay they’ve already burned up what little tolerance the township had left for them. If this keeps up much longer (and there’s an ongoing road construction project behind my building, so it probably will continue for at least a few more days) I’d say there’s good odds that there might be some Deever Dancing going on up here fairly soon. Not that I’d participate in such “revelry,” mind. Just that it’s a possibility that said “revelry” will likely occur.

They believe that Trump is a murderer because Plaquenil hasn’t been subject to double blind trials but they put utter faith in models pulled stinking from some clowns rear end that managed to miss large on the day it was released, 2 days after the previous model and only 6 days agpfter the first. Because Science.

I’ve been reading Rabelais and join in recommending the divine office for those who can’t get to mass. for any non RC’s it’s mostly the Psalms and Scripture and we agree on those.

Skimming the radio today, and Raccoon Valley Radio used the “New Normal” phrase– but the Soothing Announcer Guy also made it clear that it was for a very short time that this was the new normal, and it was as part of a “if you have a church, contact us about the 15 minutes, half hour and full hour slots on Sunday so you can put out a message or a full sermon.

I’ve been trying to make sense out of the recent request by the county here in darkest California for everyone to fill out a survey of what stocks of PPE/ventilators we all have. Huh? ventilators are high-end medical equipment, they aren’t like CPAPs or nebulizers. Why would anyone have them lying around the house? But via phon e(last night) text (this afternoon) the county wants to know. No I’m not filling out the survey – they don’t want my 2 year old N95 from the fires, that I still use when doing dusty work. Still, just … huh?

Yahoo!™News says that Gov. Newsom declared CA a “nation-state” today and that he will go his own way [cue Fleetwood Mac] because the Feds have not helped CA enough. And then he will export medical supplies to those who need them.

I note Yahoo says 15% of individual taxpayers reside in California — a quick look at the search results indicates that 12.5% of the US population lives there, so that seems mostly a wash. Of course, the critical consideration is not how many tax payers live there but what percentage of US tax receipts come from the state.

California’s contribution to US tax receipts is (456.6B/3,444.0B =) 13.26% … US spending constitutes 16% of California’s economy, although they undeniably benefit from money spent in other states, such as the ballistic missile radar systems in Alaska.

10 USC 13 §§ 251-255. The Insurrection Act. the President may employ the armed forces … to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States …the President determines that …. suppress in a state, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy …. opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States ormimpedes the course of justice under those laws.

EXACTLY my thought! Representatives of a state in insurrection should NOT be votig i Congress. Kamala, you go girl! Di-Fi, bye-bye! Nancy, you go home and take your forty-four Democrat and six Republican Representatives with you (sorry, Minority Leader McCarthy, but you’ve got to suspend your privileges.) New organization of the House, with a Republican Speaker should occur immediately.

Golly, Adam, you Schiff-head, looks like you don’t get to investigate squat in DC.
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No. Dang it. All the National Parks, National Forests, BLM, Military, all are Federal property. That is 45.8%; IDK if that percentage includes military bases or not. They just become islands in that country, that now has a Federal Deficit owed, payable NOW, to the US. Pretty sure Puerto Rico, and a few other territories would be thrilled to take up the now missing 50th spot.

I’d be perfectly happy if California counties wanted to split off from California to prevent leaving the United States. New Jefferson State? Then any congressman whose legal address, before all this started, was in those areas could keep their seat. Ditto for Senate seat if one is present. Don’t believe either Nancy, Kamala, McCarthy, nor Shift-head, would be qualified.

Just to be clear, the following are but one-fifth of the 45-person Democrat House delegation from California, members who ought be suspended until California’s state government acknowledges the Constitutional supremacy of the Federal government:

Of course, now I’m worried about my family there. I mean, more than usual. My uncle once told Mom that if he ever visited us in Idaho again, he’d never go back. Aunt fits in about as badly. Not sure why they’re still there, tbh.

Your Nation State has a serious water problem if you secede from the U.S. Emperor Newsom. Good luck rebuilding after the next quake or fire I am sure your competent governance will have money set aside for disaster relief.

Can we rename California “The Teenager State”? Because they want to pretend to be independent and have the ability to set the rules for themselves and all, but still want access to Daddy’s credit card.

They had respirators, as an epidemic plan put together under Schewarzenegger. Part of them the seals dry rotted in storage (ends up deserts are bad for them, who knew), the rest were sold off under gov Brown for the money.

And if they secede, they not only have a watrer problem, they have a serious power problem… thsi was all covered in :

As Insty noted, Governor Gavin is busily and obliviously checking off the checkboxes for DJT to invoke the Insurrection Act.

And even in the Glorious Bear Flag Peoples Republic, guess the politics of the people who join the CA National Guard.

And as to the Santa Clara County Public Health OverLady and her “Self Report All Your Mask Hoarding You Kulaks!” survey thingee, it was sent out via the set-off-your-cell-phone Full Scale Civil Alert, just like all the various Shelter Orders. I looked at my phone and assumed the comical “Err,Wut?” expression.

I am looking through the settings to see if I can set a specific ringtone for those alerts, and if so I’ll need a sound file of Sarah shouting “Attention Citizens!”

Registration is the first step toward confiscation. See New Jersey (as referenced by others here). After all, if you are an obedient little peon and stay indoors till you starve, you don’t need that PPE/ventilator, do you? And the county supervisor’s dear old auntie is certainly more important than you are- she’s his auntie.

I’m sitting here listening to people talkign about keeping us like this til june or july or august or even next fall and going “exactly where are you going to buy food if everything is shut down until July? Where will the groceries in the stores come from?” and they wont effing think about it…

Aaaannnnd, that’s as far as they go. Electricity comes from the outlet, water comes from the faucet, gas comes from the pipe. Drugs come from drugstores but them Eeeevul pharmaceutical companies make them cost too much somehow.
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Governments can only print money; they can’t make it worth anything. They can make it worth nothing.

Deliver Day of In Person. Our in our case 1 person (me) in the household directly to the County Office.

I’m in Lane County. The chances that my republican vote means anything is less useful than spraying water into the wind on a hot day. At least the spray coming back at you will cool you off. Voting republican in Lane County means nothing. I don’t think they’ve gone republican even when Portland Metro has … back when, you know, before Dirt was formed … a looooong time ago … Well Atiyha, McCall, Hatfield, anyway. I vote republican anyway. Pretty sure hubby & son do too, not like I’m checking. That’d be rude.

2016 election I just told the polls that I didn’t vote for Trump. I didn’t. 100% truth. I voted against Hillary & the spoiler. This time I’ll actually have to lie. Have to practice. I don’t lie very well. President Trump has earned my vote.

Grew up in Eugene. Been back since ’85. I echo the republican vote means nothing. City vote means even less, OTOH, city address, but technically not-city (they’ll force us in eventually, been 56 years & counting).

Have Aunt & Uncle, cousins, in Grants Pass.

Yes. Need a fence around Portland. It would help some, if it was by electoral college instead of popular vote. I mean Lane County would still be democrat but at least Oregon State as a whole might benefit. Who knows. Maybe Gov. Brown has really put a monkey wrench, with the help of the democratic machine nationwide, enough to swing the pendulum? I know. I’m not betting that way. But one could hope.